For all the buzz about Emerald Fennell’s provocative take on “Wuthering Heights,” the filmmaker wimped out.
Now in theaters, the writer/ director’s controversial movie stars Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie as the Heathcliff and Cathy, from the famous Emily Bronte novel.
In a January interview with Esquire, Fennell called it “sticky and dark” and “kind of hardcore.”
She made all those grand statements — and the trailer sent everyone in a tizzy about how raunchy it looked — but in the end, she didn’t commit enough to getting freaky and dark.
For the uninitiated, the basic plot is that in 1800s England, Cathy and Heathcliff are raised together in a dreary isolated home on the English moors, and develop a toxic relationship that explodes when she marries another man for his money. It ends in tragedy.
In her previous films like 2020’s “Promising Young Woman” and 2023’s “Saltburn,” Fennell has been known for featuring violence and pervy behavior.
So it’s no surprise that her version of “Wuthering Heights” has gotten hype for pushing the envelope, and sexing up the classic English class staple – obviously, that wasn’t in the 1847 novel. But that’s not the real problem.
Spoilers below for “Wuthering Heights” (both the novel, and the 2026 movie) and “Saltburn.”
In the novel, after Cathy dies, Heathcliff dives into her grave. He also digs up her body. He also cuts out the side of her coffin, so that when he’s buried next to her, their dirt and ashes can mingle together.
In short, Heathcliff is a lunatic. His behavior after Cathy’s death is deranged, and it’s one of the most iconic parts of “Wuthering Heights.” And this is just in the book! Surely a stuffy novel from the 1800s can’t be freakier than a movie in 2026 from a “provocative” filmmaker, can it?
As it turns out, it can. It took the book’s most iconic sequence, and made it dull.
For some reason, when Fennell was dealing with one of the most famously hardcore grief plot lines in all of literature, she decided it was time to get buttoned-up.
In the film – spoiler alert! – Heathcliff behaves like a relatively normal person, after Cathy dies. He cries and cradles her body, in bed. It’s the kind of scene you might find in any subdued period piece.
After all that hand-wringing about Fennell’s tendency towards shock value, the most shocking thing about “Wuthering Heights” is how tame it is.
Deviant behavior is part of Fennell’s brand.
Her movie “Saltburn” infamously had a scene of Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) drinking Felix (Elordi)’s bathwater after the latter had ejaculated into it. There’s also a scene where Oliver stimulates sex on Felix’s grave.
The director previously said that she was even inspired by “Wuthering Heights” for that “Saltburn” scene.
“It comes directly from the Gothic tradition,” she told Buzzfeed in 2023, citing the scene in the “Wuthering Heights” novel, “where Heathcliff digs down to get to Cathy’s coffin.”
She added that in “Saltburn,” her intention of Oliver humping Felix’s grave was that, “We have him getting a version of what he wants, but he’s still alone, he’s still there with the rocks and not the people.”
The writer/director makes movies about mentally unwell characters engaging in deviant behavior. You could even say it’s her oeuvre. “Wuthering Heights” is one of the original stories to famously feature such antics. It’s baffling that she decided to water it down.
She can’t use it as an excuse that a grave scene could have been too similar to “Saltburn,” since “Wuthering Heights” came first, and is a more iconic story. It would be worth the risk of comparison. (Fennell also seems to have no qualms about her other movies existing in “Saltburn’s” shadow, since Elordi and Alison Oliver play siblings in that movie, and a married couple in “Wuthering Heights”).
In a story published Friday, she told EW about the “Wuthering” ending, “It’s about the depths of human feeling and how it exists in a profound way, not just a physical one. And so that, I don’t know, that felt like the right way to end it for me.”
Much has been made of how she butchered the source material — Heathcliff isn’t supposed to be white, Cathy is supposed to be a teen (Robbie is 35), the book isn’t even a romance.
Sometimes, it can work for an adaptation to make changes from the book, as long as it captures its spirit. But the spirit of “Wuthering Heights” is that these are unhinged people engaging in freaky Gothic shenanigans. Whatever you think of how the filmmaker handled the adaptation, it’s bizarre that she even butchered the part of the story that fit her brand.
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